I am currently based in the US working under a H1-B visa and for personal reasons I am intending to relocate back to my home country (the UK) later in the year. As this involves some fairly large logistical headaches around the relocation I am starting to look now for potential opportunities well in advance. Therefore I'm not open to offers with an immediate start date yet I want my profile to say I am looking for a job.

I can express that I am looking for a job and my willingness to relocate in my profile but not that my availability timeframe is in the future. Short of placing this availability timeframe in my personal statement - which then makes it visible to all unless I lock down privacy settings on my profile (which I prefer not to do) - there is no obvious place to express this information.

What I would like to have is an Availablity Time Frame field (I'll leave others to come up with a better name for this) in which the options would likely be:

Immediately/ASAP

From Date X

In X Weeks/Months

In X-Y Weeks/Months

This information would be present on the employer view but hidden from the public view. It allows me as a job seeker to express that I'm looking for work but that I may not be immediately available.

I can see this being particularly useful for people doing contract work because you are likely always looking for work but often can't take on new work until a certain time because of the work you already have.

This also makes sense for those seeking jobs in countries like the UK where the notice period for permanent contracts is typically 1-3 months and fixed term contracts even in non-contracting work are more prevalent. This is unlike the US where most contracts AFAIK are permanent but at will i.e. immediate notice.

NB I am aware of the similarly titled question - Need an "Availability" text box on careers - but that simply covers specifying your availability for types of work not your time frame. This is a separate feature and one already covered by the careers platform.

Not certain that the proposal should have a high priority, but just wanted to say: You have my sympathies! I've had my share of inter-continental moves and they are a logistical nigh^W^Wfun! :-)
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Martijn PietersJan 4 '13 at 12:21

1

In the meantime, as a work-around, you could change your location to the UK and indicate that you are currently in the US but relocating on xx day and will be available from then.
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ben is uǝq backwardsJan 4 '13 at 13:29